WikiLocation: A Geo API for Wikipedia

There are any number of questions that can be answered by Wikipedia, but you can add "where am I?" to the list. Given any latitude/longitude coordinates, the WikiLocation API will find you corresponding Wikipedia articles to tell you about your surroundings.

Now you can create maps like the flagship Google Maps site has done, showing Wikipedia articles on a map. WikiLocation will be most useful from mobile applications. Help travelers find out the historical significance of their location, or use it to learn something about your own city that you don't know.

The API also connects itself to several other services, including the Foursquare API, Gowalla API and Yahoo "where on earth" (WOE) IDs. Rather than using coordinates, you can pass an ID from one of these services to retrieve Wikipedia articles.

WikiLocation is an unofficial API and was created by mobile developer Ben Dodson. Dodson also created the Tube Updates API, an unofficial service built from Transport For London's station update website.

Where am I? There are many ways that technology helps answer that question. It's also possible to answer

About the author:Adam DuVander
-- Adam heads developer relations at Orchestrate, a database-as-a-service company. He's spent many years analyzing APIs and developer tools. Previously he worked at SendGrid, edited ProgrammableWeb and wrote for Wired and Webmonkey. Adam is also the author of mapping API cookbook Map Scripting 101.